Phone lock secures Strathmore Trophy for Fife school

Published On Tue 19 Jun 2018 by Jonathan Watson

Creating a graphic means of fighting phone thieves allowed tech savvy school pupils to claim a top University of Dundee prize.

A team from Kirkcaldy’s Balwearie High School have claimed the prestigious Strathmore Trophy after designing a pictorial login system for mobile phones and tablets.

The ingenious system utilises pictures to log on to a device, requiring anybody attempting to access the system to pinpoint information within the images that would only be known to its owner.

The Fife team, consisting of four S1 pupils, defeated 14 schools from across Scotland to take the illustrious title in what was the competition’s 23^rd year.

The Strathmore Trophy was donated by Mary, Dowager Countess of Strathmore, in 1996 as part of a drive to encourage young people to develop computer technology for the benefit of others.

Having been given no information relating to their task prior to arriving at the campus’ Queen Mother Building on Monday morning, Dr Iain Murray, of the University’s Computing department, said, “Once again the whole judging panel has been hugely impressed by the ingenuity of Scotland’s school pupils.

“This year’s task was particularly challenging and the variety of solutions that were proposed by our competing schools demonstrated great creativity.

“However, the team from Balwearie High School developed an idea that significantly bolstered the security of a device while also being simple to understand, and that is the sort of thinking that top technology firms really admire.”

For media enquiries contact:
Jonathan Watson
Media Relations Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
Tel: +44 (0)1382 381489
Email: j.s.watson@dundee.ac.uk